


Into the Void

by Elvaron



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvaron/pseuds/Elvaron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the past is like a dream. Or a nightmare. Illyan-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Void

Memory for the ordinary man was a fickle thing, they said. "Dreamlike", they described it – but since his own dreams were crystal clear when he was dreaming, he guessed from his own faded memories of a time before the chip, that they meant something more along the lines of _like the memory of a dream_.

He could sympathise with that. He remembered his dreams upon waking - real, genuine organic memories, of scenes and images that would fade quickly away. As data that had never been received, they could never be stored, except in the ephemeral recollection of the organic mind.

It was a duality that he relied on and more than relied on, when he shot awake in the dead of the night, unable to distinguish dream from memory from reality. Dreams slipped through like water through a sieve, memory remained - it was easy to enough to tell them apart when he was awake. More insidious were the memories that ran into dreams, until one was indistinguishable from the other. Awake, he could guard against it. But asleep… There was no switch that he could flick to deactivate the chip, or God knew he would have flicked it a long time ago. So it ran continuously, processing and recording endlessly, even when he closed his eyes and let down his guard. And without the constraints and discipline of the waking mind, his unconscious mind sought and pulled data from the chip randomly, dragging him into constructed dreamscapes that were picture perfect recreations of bygone times.

Tonight the dream was a memory – of the play of sunlight on a hill in Sergyar, watching Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith vanish off into the distance and remembering the embarrassment of the reaming that Negri had given him after that. Marriage proposal indeed. _Getting just a little pregnant, are we, Lieutenant?_ , Negri's sardonic voice seemed to sound right in his ear, _Allowing personal discretion to interfere with our judgment?_ He smiled – uncomfortable as that particular dressing down had been, the sound of his superior's voice, out of place on this sunny hillside, was a reminder that the scene before his eyes was nothing more than a memory. He watched, a comfortable backseat passenger, as his younger self grew squirmy enough to pursue his missing charge, to find him kissing Naismith -- _Lady Vorkogisan now_ \-- both of them framed for one glorious instant against the glow of the sun.

The scream of his commconsole dragged him out of that dream. He traded sunlight for the darkness of his room in an instant, to the sound of Lieutenant Kalris' anxious voice over the comm, yelling for him to come immediately. Seventeen minutes after midnight. He didn't have to be an analyst to figure out that something was wrong. He was on his feet in an instant, grabbing for his wristcomm and earpiece even before he reached for his uniform. Where what, _details, Lieutenant_ \- the snap of his voice brought the gibbering junior officer back to his senses, but the report that he stammered out was nightmarish in nature. Vorkosigan, targeted – no, attacked –

 _Surely the attacker was stopped before he got to the Regent – we beefed up security after the sonic grenade --_

 _\-- Nossir,_ the dread in Kalris' voice was audible, _The attacker got through, fired a soltoxin grenade through the window._

Strange, he thought, that he didn't _feel_ anything. Maybe someone had shot him with a nerve disruptor while he slept. He snapped more orders, fingers flying over his console as he called up more updates. Figures and words ran across the screen faster than his mind could register – he dumped them to his memory chip and left the reading for later. He didn't dare to stop. There was precious little he could do from here – could do at all, now, after the fact – the guard commander would have thrown up the cordon and would be arresting everyone in sight. His subordinates didn't know enough to be useful. The antidote was being shipped in from ImpMil – no, better from the Emperor's residence. The damage control was certainly running far better than the Security had.

He dragged his boots on and ran to the waiting aircar – it was raining, of _course_ it would be raining – the reports still flooding in. The antidote had arrived in time, the Regent was alive, his wife was alive, it was under control –

 _The antidote is a teratogen_. The words popped up as though of their own accord, his subconscious mind cross referencing even while his conscious mind was absorbed.

He _still_ didn't feel it – shock, it had to be – although his logical mind prompted that he should be feeling horrendous dread right now. Fear. The aircar stopped. His fingers felt numb as they grabbed the door handle and wrenched it open, as he spilled out into the rain and ran up the steps to Vorkosigan House. There - _there_ was Lord Vorkosigan, and Cordelia right beside him. Safe. Alright. He opened his mouth to call out to them—

\--when Cordelia looked right at him. The accusation in her eyes seemed to sear right through him, as certainly as the poison was burning through her unborn child right now. The force of it made him want to stagger back a step, but his limbs had turned to stone. There was the dread now, the dread and the guilt and the horror, all crashing down on him in a wave. All that had been pent up before; all released now in a single wave.

 _Simon,_ Cordelia said, sweeping forward, and the calm sadness in her voice cut him to shreds where he stood. The rest of the world was gone, wiped out in a vortex of darkness. There was only him, the accused, and his accuser, standing before him with sad grey eyes -- _You could drown in those eyes_ \-- was it Vorkosigan who had said that? Her fingers captured his chin, tilted his head up, and he thought vaguely that he had run a thousand interrogations in his lifetime and if only he had a fraction of the talent that Cordelia seemed to have, maybe this would never happened –

 _Why did you murder my baby, Simon?_

He couldn't see her other hand. It must have plunged into his chest to rip his heart out, because the world dissolved under the crashing weight of pain and emotion to the sound of his own scream.

  
"--Sir. Sir!"

They were holding him down. Underwater. His lungs were going to burst. He wrenched against the grip, failed to break it, sucked an involuntary breath. Air. _Air_ , not water. He was awake. Wasn't awake. Didn't know any more. "Vorkosigan—"

 _Why did you murder my baby--_

"Sir?" A face hovered into view. Not Vorkosigan. Not even close. Same tabs on the collar, though. Lieutenant. Vor Lieutenant. Vor— he wrestled for control, trying to recall. Too easy to check his chip. Too easy to fall back into that trap, where he would be dragged back under, lost in the chaos of his own mind. He needed something external, something to grab onto, something _real_ that he could believe in. They'd warned about this, hadn't they? The doctors. They'd said –

\--no, don't check that, don't even try–

Something about multiple realities. It'd driven the others mad. He'd never had a problem. The stable one. The one in control. So good at keeping his realities separate. So what had gone wrong?

"Vorberg," he gasped out. He didn't even know where the name had come from. "Get Vorkosigan."

 _Why did you murder my baby?_

He couldn't take this any more. A corpsman was approaching, armed with a hypospray – damnit, he couldn't go back there, didn't the bastards understand— he screamed at the man to get away, saw in the set determination in his eyes that he wasn't going to listen. With the strength of desperation he yanked at the restraints, felt them snap gratifyingly. His knee took the corpsman in the stomach, sending him buckling to his knees. His fingers closed around the man's wrist, yanking with a sharp motion that disarmed him, and then he was smashing the hypospray against the wall. Shards. So many shards. Falling through his fingers like the shattered remains of his reality.

Maybe this was hell. No, no 'maybe' about it. He'd failed, this was --

 _Why did you--_

 _I didn't--_

"Sir—" Vorberg was holding onto him now, yelling for backup. But there was no backup for him now, was there? There was only judgment. Sea grey eyes. That voice, over and over again in his head. The corpsman was huddled over at his feet, clutching at his ribs and cursing. Medical corpsman. Angels of mercy. What mercy could they give him?

"Vorkosigan," he coughed out, his throat raw and dry. The doors hissed open. More guards. More medics. More _mercy_. There was only one source of mercy left to him, and he'd fling himself on it. A clean execution at the hands of his liegelord was better than this.

 _Running away are we, Lieutenant? Cowardice has a name now…_

"The Count, sir? Or his son?" Vorberg asked anxiously, hanging on for dear life.

"The--" His son?

 _Why did you—_

 _No._

He froze. The medics advanced warily. Wolf pack or vultures? Either way, they were going for the kill. He didn't have much time left. Loathe as he was to touch the chip's archives, he had no choice. It was that or be lost forever. With a breath, he closed his eyes and plunged into the whirlpool of memory, digging, digging, digging.

Data flowed past, reams and reams of it. More data than he knew what to do with. It had always been an impediment, when he was in a hurry. Dimly, he heard footsteps, then Vorberg's voice, yelling at them to stand back, give the Chief some _time_.

 _Good man. I commend him to you, Aral…_

Then he hit it, that well of memories. They fountained up, each of them brilliantly clear and sharp as only the chip could preserve them. Cordelia. Aral. ImpMil. A uterine replicator. _Miles_.

"Miles," he said, even as they slammed him back onto the bed, fastened the restraints back into place. He heard the click of a hypospray being prepped and snarled, sending the corpsman backing off for two precious seconds. "Get me Miles."

Something real. Something tangible, in a world where nothing was certain any more. The relief that swept through him as Vorberg nodded in acknowledgment was almost, _almost_ enough to sweep away the dread of being sedated again. If Miles hadn't died, then this wasn't judgment, wasn't some kind of atonement for his crimes. For a moment, he considered that he no longer needed to run, then the realisation hit him.

If it wasn't some unique form of hell, then either the damn chip was breaking up, or he was finally going insane. And if that was the case, there was no parole and no hope of release at the end. He had clawed back from the brink of insanity this time, but what about the next? And the next? How long before he _forgot_ again? How long before nightmares became his reality? No, there was no easy way out of this. It would simply go on. Forever.

 _It won't be running away, Captain Negri. It's like slitting the throat of a man who's been hit by disruptor fire and somehow survived…_

He couldn't ask Aral to do it, though – the man had too much blood on his conscience already. He couldn't add to that burden of guilt. But he needed the Count's Voice to release him from his oath.

 _Miles._

The Vorkosigans had created him. They were the only ones he could trust to end this.

The hypospray stung against his arm, the sedatives racing through his system. His mental defenses wavered, disintegrated, leaving nothing to stand between him and the onslaught. Memories. Dreams. Nightmares. A mutant hybrid of all three. They crashed over him, each one clear as day and murkier than the darkest night. The past. The present. Things that had never been. He couldn't distinguish one from the other any more.

But very soon it would no longer matter.  


**Author's Note:**

> Re-post of an older work, originally stored on LJ.


End file.
